Chuck vs The Last Request
by ne71
Summary: What's the opposite of fluffy? Prickly? This is a prickly story. Character death. A really important one.
1. The Last Request

_A/N: I know, I know. Who does this guy think he is, strolling back in here after being gone for so long? I swear I was faithful. Plus, I figure if **Canadian Crow** can get back into the game, so can I. _

_This is something I wrote a LONG time ago, and stopped about two sentences short of finishing. Found those sentences tonight, but you may wish they'd remained lost. This is a dark one. This is so dark it smudged my soul. _

* * *

The rifle bucks.

Through the haze and the smell of the cordite, I see the mark go down. Looks like a clean hit, but it can't hurt to be sure. I set the rifle down, check the clip on my automatic in case of any surprises, and climb down the fire escape to the alley below. I remember to walk. I remember not to look over my shoulder.

You do what I do, you have to look like you belong in any situation. You have to look like you're supposed to be wherever you are. And that means no shifty eyes, no nervous fidgeting, and - most important of all - no looking over your shoulder.

It's that last one that gets most guys. Even when you've pulled a job off, even when you've done it perfectly clean, all it takes is that one look, that one indicator of the need for self-preservation, to blow your cover. Someone walking along looking straight ahead has done nothing worthy of suspicion.

Someone looking over his shoulder just did something very bad.

So that's why I can say I've lasted so long in a field that isn't exactly known for its retirement plan. That's why groups from all over the world have me on speed dial when they need something done and no trace of it back to them.

That's why I'm the guy who just killed Charles Carmichael.

**Chuck vs the Last Request**

Finally in front of him, dying in the loading dock of an electronics store in Burbank of all places, I crouch down over him to confirm his identity. The face is a match, even screwed up into a painful grimace.

He stares at the wound in disbelief, as if this is something that shouldn't belong to him, a world he doesn't inhabit. It throws me, that look. Someone as hunted, as wanted dead, as Charles Carmichael - someone like that - should expect this. Accept it. This man…

This man, it seems, was meant for gentler things.

"Sorry friend," I say, and am startled by the sincerity in my voice. "Nothing personal."

He manages something close to a laugh at that, and his eyes go unfocused for a moment. For a moment, he's somewhere else, and then just as quickly he's back and his face goes serious.

"Need you… to do something for me."

That's a new one. I cock my head in reply, to let him know I'm listening.

"There's a woman," he continues, his voice shaking. "One like you've never seen before. Beautiful… dangerous."

"One way or another, they all are, my friend."

"No," he replies, shaking his head. He squints, trying to focus. Not much time left now. "Not like this. She… she's a force of nature. Driven… unstoppable…" Delirious now, a tiny smile graces his lips.

"And yeah, beautiful. So amazingly beautiful."

His face goes slack, and for a moment I figure he's gone. Not the worst way to go, dying with the image of someone like that in your head. But then he turns to me again.

"When you see her, tell her… tell her that she was the one great thing in my life. That I'd do it all again, even this, for the time we had together. Tell her… tell her that now, at the end of it all… that my thoughts… were of her."

He stares at me expectantly.

"Sounds like quite a woman," I finally say. "And how do I find this goddess of yours?"

With a devil's strength he pulls himself up, soundlessly in spite of the obvious pain, and brings his face a few inches from mine. Agony written in his features, he still manages a hint of a smile. "Don't worry," he finally says, and lowers his voice to a whisper.

"She'll find you."

Something deep inside me goes cold, and he sees it. Satisfied, he sinks back and rests his head on the ground. His last breath escapes in a deep, gravelly laugh, and then he's gone.

I stand there, for a very long time, looking down at the man I've killed. Just one. One of hundreds, but different from any. For the first time out of all of them, I feel I've done something terribly wrong. For the first time out of all of them, I regret. And as I turn to walk away, to disappear into the night and the streets, for the first time ever…

I look over my shoulder.

* * *

_I know, right? I promise the next one will have puppies or something. _

_If you're not reading Canadian Crow's "Hidden File" stories, I just don't know what to do about you. Go, check them out now, and keep in mind that they were started BEFORE the S2 finale. You'll thank me, I promise. Either that or your momma brought you up wrong. _

_Thanks, as always, for reading. -Nick_


	2. The Offer

"Oh, wow, I thought he was dead." _–everyone getting my author alert, probably_

Well, it took a very long time, but I finally decided to comply with the requests to see exactly what becomes of our contract killer with the horribly bad fortune of drawing Charles Carmichael as his last job. I'm not normally a fan of writing Chuck stories without Chuck, but I think I figured out a way to make it work. Hopefully you agree.

* * *

The next few weeks go badly.

It starts with a job falling through – a big one, one I'd been counting on. The contact disappears without a trace, even after I'd traveled all the way to Sydney. Not the first time something like that happens, but the first time in a very long while. The timing is suspect, but I let it slide.

My Swiss bank account goes inexplicably empty. One of many, and I still have my cash reserves hidden here and there, but a year's worth of payments are gone without a trace, and seeking legal recourse isn't exactly an option for someone like me. It's possible this is a coincidence. It's not probable.

Standing on the street in Manhattan with the other onlookers, gazing up at the smoke billowing out of my favorite apartment, the cold reality of my new situation fully sinks in.

**Chuck vs the Last Request  
****Chapter Two  
****The Offer**

In Belize, the moment I shut the door to my hotel room the lights flick on. I freeze, face to the door, clutching bags of toothpaste and soap. This is it, I think to myself. This is how it ends.

"Turn around."

The voice is low. Masculine. Relief floods over me. This will be temporary.

"Turn around, dead man."

I do, and see his large form filling the chair in the corner of my little room. Dark suit, expressionless face. He's government, the bad kind. I can tell immediately.

"You're here about Carmich—"

"Shut up."

I do. I put my bags down on the floor. He rises, slowly, no weapons in sight but full of the assurance that he won't need one.

"You've noticed by now that your little network is starting to dry up. No more jobs, no more money, no more contacts. Yeah?"

"Who-"

"I'm here to kill you." This is the first time in my life I have heard those words. I have conducted my business, my actions, my _life_ in such a way that I have successfully avoided those words up until now. Before this moment, I had no real enemies; no one I killed ever even know who I was. No one ever found me. And now, found, I feel my stomach twist.

He clarifies himself; makes it worse: "I want to kill you. Very badly. Understand?"

I nod.

"That's pretty much my purpose in life," he continues. "Like you, I guess. Only I'm on the… preferable… side of the law." He picks a piece of lint off the arm of the chair, inspects it, and flicks it away. I feel a kinship to it.

"Anyway, from what I've read about you in the official reports, you're smart enough to know that you've made an enormous mistake."

"I… I was… it was just a jo—"

"Shut. Up."

I clamp my lips together and turn my eyes to the floor. He takes a step closer, and I instinctively back into the door.

"The mark, the 'job' of yours? Happened to be one of the most accomplished espionage agents our government has ever had the privilege of utilizing. Happened to be one of the best partners I ever had. Happened to be—"

He pauses; his lips twist. He's having trouble saying the next words. He finally forces them out.

"Happened to be my friend."

A flicker of rage appears on his face, and for a moment I'm convinced he's going to kill me right here and now. But instead he calms enough to continue. "None of that compares to what he was to her," he finally says. He takes a step closer. I can't press myself into the door any harder.

"I wanted to look at you. I've got surveillance photos, passport pictures, that kind of thing. But you, I wanted to see in person. Wanted to stand in front of you. She's called dibs on you, and I'm not going to argue that. She's got more of a right to you than I do. But I want to kill you, very badly. I want to kill you more than I've ever wanted to kill someone in my life, and that's a very long list. So I'm going to make you a one-time offer. Listen carefully."

He leans in close. I can smell cigars and bourbon.

"She's coming for you. She is capable, and dangerous, and unimaginably angry. Every ounce of her talent and drive is now focused completely on one thing. She is single-minded in her determination to not just kill you, but completely destroy you. She will succeed in doing this, because she is infinitely better than you in every conceivable way. _That_ is what is coming for you now. You need to fully understand that before I make my offer," he says. "Tell me you understand the depth of what I'm saying."

"I understand," I whisper.

"Then beg," he growls, an inch away from my face now. "Beg me, with everything you've got, every little ounce of your miserable existence, to kill you right here and now. I'll do it. I'll deal with the fallout from her, for taking this away from her, if you beg for it. She may only break a few of my bones if she likes my story about how you knelt and cried and begged with a runny nose for me to snap your little neck. If I describe well enough the sound it made, the sounds you'll make as you die. If I tell a good enough story of the pathetic little end to your life. It may be enough for her. Beg for that, right now, and I'll do it."

He will. I know this with every fiber of my being. This is not a cruel joke. If I do what he says, this man will kill me.

"I… I don't… I don't want to die," I finally force out, and I hate the whimper in my voice. A strange mixture of disappointment and relief glides over his face, until it is replaced by a sour grin.

"That'll change."

He reaches past me, grasps the doorknob, and flings me into the kitchenette almost effortlessly as he swings the door open. He takes a moment to look at me as I stumble to regain my stance. "She's coming," he says. "Run, hide, do whatever you like. It won't make a difference."

The corner of his mouth twitches up into a cruel smirk. "Seen a lot of very bad things in my time," he says. "Really looking forward to what she does to you." And with that, he's gone.

For now, I breathe a sigh of relief. I do this because I am so very naïve. I have not been educated at this point. I don't know that, in the weeks and months to come, I will look back at this moment and wish I had accepted his offer. Eventually I will come to see this night as the last time I has anything resembling peace. Because it is about to get so much worse. Because my life is about to become a nightmare.

Because she is coming.

* * *

This was originally going to be a kind of intermission in the second and final chapter, but I like Casey so much I figured I'd let him have the stage all to himself. And don't worry; Sarah's going to live up to every word. Stay tuned.

Thanks, as always, for reading and reviewing. -Nick


	3. She'll Find You

She is relentless.

Her determination shows in the exhaustive way she haunts me, making herself known to me at every turn without showing her face a single time. She exists in every emptied account, every cancelled contract, every former contact whose face now flashes with fear at the sight of my approach. It is not me that they fear.

She is brilliant.

She takes her time, dismantling my life slowly and in sequence. First my money, then my jobs, then my places of refuge until after eight months I am well and truly on my own. There is the occasional hidden reserve of cash that she clearly allows me to keep, in order to keep my flight from her active. I do my best to remain entertaining. It is the one reason I am still alive.

She is angry.

This, I of course know. But there is a deeply personal element to what she is doing to my life that becomes clearer every day. This is not the cool detachment I've grown used to in my career, where names are given with envelopes and account numbers and lives end without feeling or remorse. This is intimate, a result of thorough examination into every corner of my life. The information is used in the most creative and effective ways possible. She toys with me, lets me become just barely comfortable in a life and location before nudging me out with a target painted in burned apartments and clipped brake lines.

She is coming.

It will be today. I can feel it.

One year to the day after I pulled a trigger for the last time in my life, I have sense enough to go as far underground as I can. Scraping together the last bits of my funds, I fly under one of my remaining good aliases to Tijuana, then a bus to Ensenada, and finally the bed of a pickup truck to San Quintin. I pay cash for a tiny room with a kitchenette, and when I open the door she is there.

**Chuck vs the Last Request  
****Chapter Three  
****She'll Find You**

Closing the door behind me, I set my duffel bag on the floor. She sits, casually, at the kitchen table. We stare at each other for a long moment. It's a strange end to the last year, a year during which I've run to the best of my ability and yet it seems she's barely had to chase.

"He said you were beautiful," I finally force out.

She silences me with a hand held up, palm to me. "Not yet. We'll get to that. Sit down." She gestures to a chair next to the bed. I do as I'm told.

"You know why I'm here." It's not a question.

"Yes."

"All right, then. Tell me why I'm here."

"You're here to kill me."

She cocks her head, purses her lips a bit. Disappointment. "Eventually," she says. "It's going to take a long time. We're not going to start yet. Soon."

And all at once, every hopeful thought I'd stored away over the past year – every delusion that there would be some sort of mercy, a judgment that the months of agony have been punishment enough, or even a quick and painless end – disintegrates and crumbles to make way for the harsh reality of what now awaits me.

"It's funny. I almost didn't want to do this today. The whole 'one year to the day' thing," she says, gesturing vaguely. "It's so maudlin. But to be honest, you were starting to bore me." She sets a leather case on the kitchen table. It doesn't take much imagination to guess what is inside.

"I wasn't supposed to love him," she says, matter-of-factly. It throws me, the way she says it. She runs her fingers lazily along the edge of the leather case as her voice softens.

"I was only supposed to watch over him, but I loved him instead. We sat on a picnic table one night," she says, "not too long after we first met. Ate birthday cake." She smiles a bit at the memory and is lost in it for a moment. "He wasn't supposed to know a single real thing about me, but I couldn't help telling him one night that the next day was my birthday. He dragged me to a store so he could buy a cake and candles. Dragged me to a park so I could make a wish at midnight. And I wished for us to be together, and we ate birthday cake, and eventually the wish came true."

Her voice goes hard, as she looks at me pointedly. "For a while."

I open my mouth to say something, but no words come out. Nothing useful comes to mind. "Now you tell me a story," she says, almost cheerily. But her tone darkens immediately. "Tell me about Agioritika."

The name falls easily from her lips. And I understand immediately what she means, what she wants from me.

"I'd made it to Greece. Had a contact there who swore he'd help me in exchange for… some work. I had one last account that hadn't been emptied yet. I thought if I could just make it to Tripoli, get this job done, that I could start building my life up again. I figured it was my last chance. That things were about to get very bad otherwise."

She nods, as if very interested in my story, as if she doesn't know how it ends. "And how did it go?"

"My contact in Tripoli wasn't in his apartment. Just blood everywhere. One of my rifles, one that had gone missing a few weeks before, was in the bedroom."

"Oh. That must have been troublesome."

"The police had the building surrounded. They'd been called already."

"Unfortunate."

"I had to jump to the next roof, then down to the ground. Fractured my ankle. There was a car with the keys in the ignition right next to me, though."

"Imagine the luck."

"I was able to slip away in the car, and made it to Agioritika. Small enough little village that I figured the police wouldn't look for me. Paid off the locals to help me, put me up in an abandoned house, get an old doctor to put a cast on my ankle."

"Well, it sounds like it turned out just fine, then," she says brightly. "Did it? Turn out fine, I mean?"

"For a while."

She leans in, as if enthralled. "What happened?"

A lump rises in my throat. "The car I'd used… started to smell. The locals… they opened the trunk."

She covers her mouth, exaggeratedly. "What on earth was in the trunk?"

"My contact from Tripoli."

"Ooh. That is unfortunate."

"I spent a week in a jail in Athens. They tried to beat a confession out of me."

"But you stayed strong, didn't you? Didn't give in. Tough little soldier."

"No. I confessed. But the night before my trial one of the guards dragged me out in a laundry bag and stuffed me into a trunk. I woke up at the seaport."

"And slipped away into the night," she says, nodding. "Amazing story of endurance. And how long ago was that?"

"Six months."

"Wow," she says. "I can only imagine what's happened since."

She, of course, knows. This was only one of so many stories. She has been the architect of every kind of pain in my life for a year, and the force which has lifted me from one bad situation only to place me into another. Now, at the end, I can only think of one thing.

"Before all that, there was a man who came to see me," I say. "In Belize. He said if I begged he'd-"

"Oh, we had a conversation about that, he and I."

She says it like a mother whose son has misbehaved in school, but I can only imagine how violent that "conversation" had been.

"I told him that I didn't want to die. He said I'd change my mind."

She cocks her head, genuinely interested.

"Have you?"

It's the question I've asked myself countless times in the months since that night.

"I don't want to die," I finally answer, "but I can't live like this anymore. So I'm begging you, like he wanted me to beg him. I'll do anything. Please, please, don't do this. Please don't kill me. Your man - he was a good man. He was gentile and caring, from everything you've told me. And he loved you so much. He wouldn't want you to do this, would he?"

Her expression shifts, almost undetectably. But I can see it - I'm getting though to her.

"Ask yourself what he'd do," I continue, down the right track. "Ask yourself, if he was standing right here next to you, would he want you to kill me."

She blinks, straightens a bit. Her eyebrows furrow. This is working. This is right.

"I will never... _ever_ harm another living being again, I swear to you. And you would know, wouldn't you? I haven't done a single thing this past year that's escaped your attention. I'll stop. I'll do good from now on. I'll do anything you want me to do if you just let me live. That's what he'd do, isn't it? He'd let me live if he knew I'd really change."

And at that, her face softens. I can't believe it. I'm going to convince her.

"He was a good man," I whisper. "A great man, I can see now. And I never would have taken him away from you if I'd known that. I'd have turned the job down. But I didn't know. He was just a name on a piece of paper. It wasn't personal."

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know. I've just made the second biggest mistake of my life. The last mistake of my life.

Her eyes flash with anger, and like magic a blade appears in her hand. Her arm lashes out, and before I can even feel it I know she's sliced a line into my cheek. I clasp my hands together to keep them still. I can't fight back. I don't dare fight back.

"But it _is_ personal," she hisses, leaning in close. "It's the single most personal thing one human being can do to another. You took _everything_ from him. His life, his dreams, his future are all gone because of you." She grabs my throat, squeezing just enough so that I can barely breathe. "We were going to have a child. We were _so close_-" She squeezes harder, just for a moment, to punctuate the word, and black seeps in from the corners of my vision. "Just another month, maybe, and I'd have our baby inside me. A little piece of him, a future that included him in some way."

She finally releases my throat, and I gasp for air. "Another month, and maybe I'd have had something to fill the space in my life. But I don't even have that. All I have left," she says, dragging the blade gently down the bridge of my nose, "is you."

She runs the blade across my lips, lifting it a bit under my chin, nudging my head up so that I'm looking up at her. "And now I'm done with you."

Try as I might, I can't stop the tears from pooling in my eyes. If she notices, she doesn't show it. Her face is once more an impenetrable mask. My moment is gone, and there is no point in trying again. I'll only make it worse.

"To be fair, you're right," she says. "Chuck Bartowski wouldn't have wanted to kill you. Chuck would have seen the good, no matter how tiny, in you. The value to your life. He would have begged me to let you live."

She grabs my face with her hand, and squeezes hard.

"And if he was here, I'd listen."

A flick of her wrist, and my other cheek opens up. My arms flinch reflexively, but I force them back down. I shouldn't move. If I move she'll make it worse.

"Now Sarah Walker, on the other hand," she says, letting go of me and crossing the room to the kitchen table, "Sarah Walker very much wants to kill you. Slowly. Painfully." She takes a series of blades out of the leather case and sets them on the table. "You can tell me now."

For a moment I'm thrown, but then I remember what I was first trying to tell her. "He said you were beautiful. And dangerous." She closes her eyes, as if she's listening to a beautiful melody. "Said he'd do it all again, even dying the way he did, for just another moment with you. That his time with you was the happiest in his life." A tiny smile appears on her lips, and I see why he loved her so much. I see now what was lost. "And just before... Before he..."

Her eyes open, her expression cross at my hesitation, and she quirks an eyebrow expectantly.

"The last thing he said was that you'd find me."

She laughs - _laughs_ \- at that, and wipes a tear from her eye. "Yeah," she says, "that's my Chuck." She shakes her head, twirls a blade in her hand, and looks at me.

"Well," she says, crossing the room. "Let's get started."

I try to give her everything she wants. I cry, and scream, and shriek with every cut. I shake and convulse as she works. I reach deep down inside myself to feel everything she's doing to me, to convey it to her as best I can on the tiniest chance that it will satisfy her, that it will give her incentive to let me live. There will be no more begging, no more reasoning with her, I know; so I can only hope beyond hope that my suffering becomes enough for her to stop short of taking my life. In the end, however...

In the end it is not.

* * *

_This concludes the "Last Request" story. This was uncharacteristically dark for me, so now that I've gotten it out of my system you can count on something fluffier than a stuffed bunny coming your way soon._

_Extra observant readers will notice that I've borrowed Sarah's story about her birthday from waaay back in 2008's "Of Stars and Spies and Birthday Wishes" by the remarkable **brickroad16**. It was the very first Chuck story I ever read on this site, so I wanted to give it a special place here._

_PS: Rob M – if you're going to write a review that complimentary, do it from an account so I can thank you. Anyway, thank you._

_-Nick_


End file.
